Donny Schatz
The Saturday night win by Donny Schatz at Lakeside Speedway in Kansas City, Kansas was one very much needed by the No. 15 Tony Stewart Racing team following a very difficult stretch of ten races in which no top-5 finishes were achieved while, at the same time, four results outside the top-15 were posted.
Dating back to the World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series races held at Silver Dollar Speedway in early September, the 10-time series champion has endured a streak the likes of which had rarely been seen during his illustrious career. But something happened at Lakeside that demonstrated an improvement in a much needed area.
“It started good,” Schatz declared in his post-race interview with DirtVision.com. “I mean the guys unloaded and we were right up there hot lapping and qualifying so that always helps.”
It’s no secret that being fast in the early portion of the night is important because it opens the door for a good heat race finish, and thus, a spot in the redraw and dash race. The veteran racer showed just how important that is to a team’s success on Saturday night.
Schatz qualified 4th overall at Lakeside then finished second in his heat race which put him in the six-driver World of Outlaws redraw. A runner-up finish in the dash race allowed him to start the 25-lap feature from the outside of the front row. That put the Fargo, North Dakota driver in position for a late race pass on David Gravel to score his first victory since taking a preliminary event checkered flag prior to the Knoxville Nationals.
In its ten most recent outings, the No. 15 had qualified no better than sixth in two-group time-trials with other efforts falling much further back in the order. Single-group qualifying fared no better with no results higher than 11th overall. From there, the best heat race finishes during that stretch of races had been a pair of fourth-place efforts with some nights even bringing about Last Chance Showdown appearances. That, in turn, meant Schatz had to start main events from mid-pack or worse which, with the relatively short distances of features, made scoring solid finishes difficult.
When asked about his team’s rough stretch, Schatz pointed out that the terminology might not have been strong enough.
“Man, if you call that a rough stretch I’d hate to see what you consider a disaster,” Schatz replied. “It’s not for lack of trying. Everybody works hard. We’re at every one of these races. You take these wins but you’ve got to take the lickings too. We take the lickings here every single night. Sometimes it’s outside forces that aren’t here that have all the answers. We just have to do our best and some nights aren’t very good.”
The 46-year-old driver has seen a lot over the course of his stellar career. He knows when a good team keeps working, their fortunes will eventually turn around.
“Some nights aren’t even satisfactory but nights like tonight help us,” Schatz added. “We tore our car up last week at Port Royal pretty bad. These guys put a new car together and it’s that time of year where you’ve got to start trying some things. Obviously, it was pretty good. The goal is consistency. We’ve got a lot of great partners here and we want to win races and we want to do the best we can for them. Until we get to next week and see what happens on Friday at Devils Bowl, it will be hard to tell but tonight was great.”
Schatz currently sits 6th in the series standings.
The World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series will contest the final racing event in the history of the Devil’s Bowl Speedway in Mesquite, Texas next weekend.
Please consider also reading:
Donny Schatz uses late pass to secure WoO Sprints win at Lakeside
Respond to this post on Twitter by following @RichardAllenIDR and @MichaelRMoats or by liking the InsideDirtRacing.com Facebook page.
Also, NASCAR and pavement racing fans can check out InsideCircleTrack.com
